Road Safety/ Yellow line/White line

Here in Queensland a yellow line on the side of the road means no parking.
We have always had white line marking , never yellow, but then we have always been a little bit different.

I don't have any trouble with white lines. They show up good enough for me but then a lot of the roads here in the West have ripple strips along the inside.

This flushing of tanks and spray gear is a much bigger issue than some people may think.

A mate of mines brother runs a quite large line marking business and does all sorts of work including highways in QLD, nothern NSW and NT.

His highway trucks will mark one or two lines to the right of the truck and one line to the left of the truck.

all run from the same preasurising equipment and the same tank......thus he can mark one side of a two lane highway in one pass.

the amount of paint involved is simply vast, you could probaly paint 3 rooms and a hall with the amount of paint that comes out when they purge the lines on these trucks.

the marking truck has an huge tank ( like thousands of litres), and on highway runs, he usess chase trucks to keep the supply up to the marking truck.

The amount of waste and mess involved in cleaning these things is likewise immense, so they tend to keep the thing continuously marking as long as they can so they don't have to clean the thing.

AND of course these days the greenies would not just let them clean out anywhere........they would have to go to a facility where all the contaminants could be captured and "properly" disposed of.

Just getting a sufficient supply of paint to a remote section of highway is a logistic issue on its own.

marking 1 yellow line would either mean a full clean and another pass or two at that section of road, a second vehicle and chase team, or a truck with two colours and two chase teams one for each colour.
a two colour truck would then only go half as far when marking a single line.

On the larger open highways we have, the costs with be considerable.

Arround town most of the marking is done by what amounts to oversized go carts that may carry 200 ish litres..so changing colours is less of an issue, and there is more lines in a given area so having one cart for white and one for yellow is less of an issue.

Raised thermoplastic lines are far far better than any of the conventional line paints, they are more visable in all weather as they stand up off the road and they have that tactile property...and they are far more durable

This bloke has machines that do that too....but it is a lot more expensive....there is a lot of it about but the authorities don't have the $$$$ to do it everywhere.

OH... :) on an environmental note, most bright yellow paint contains lead, if you want a bright yellow paint that does not contain lead, that gets a lot more expensive.......I just threw that one in, because I am sure someone will have raised it somewhere.

Just be thankfull you have a white line to show the edge of the road, its not that long ago that thousands of Km of main highways had nothing but a centreline.

It only since the 90s' that I have seen a campaign of extending the verges and marking the left hand boundries of a great many two lane highways.....on quite a lot of roads you can see where the verge has been extended, only then did they have somewhere to mark the lift hand boundry.

cheers

Having moved from NSW to WA, we found it strange at first that WA does not use yellow paint at all for lane markings. When we went to the USA our eyes hurt with all the yellow lane paint, which reminded us we hadn't seen it for so long! Interesting post.

MM

All road markings in NSW were yellow up to the 50s, can't remember when or why they changed. However I did notice the white lines were easier to see on dry roads.

The edge lines (fog lines is just a colloquial expression) were introduced after the change of colour of the centre lines. It is an offence to drive on or over an edge line. Quote from the Australian Road Rules:

150 Driving on or across a continuous white edge line
(1) A driver must not drive on or over a continuous white edge
line on a road unless subrule (1A) or (1B) applies to the driver.
Offence provision.

Note 1 Edge line is defined in the dictionary.
Note 2 A driver must not stop at the side of a road marked with a continuous yellow edge line
— see rule 169.
(1A) A driver may drive on or over a continuous white edge line on a road if the driver is:
(a) overtaking a vehicle that is turning right, or making a U-turn from the centre of the road, and is giving a right change of direction signal; or
(b) driving a slow-moving vehicle, and it is necessary for the driver to drive on or over the edge line to allow the vehicle to be overtaken or passed by another vehicle; or
(c) driving a vehicle that is too wide, or too long, to drive on the road without driving on or over the edge line; or
(d) permitted to drive on or over the edge line under another law of this jurisdiction; or
(e) avoiding an obstruction.

(1B) A driver may drive on or over a continuous white edge line on a road for up to 100 metres if the driver is:
(a) turning at an intersection; or
(b) entering or leaving the road; or
(c) entering a part of the road of one kind from a part of the road of another kind (for example, moving to or from a service road, a shoulder of the road or an emergency stopping lane); or
(d) stopping at the side of the road (including any shoulder of the road).

(2) This rule does not apply to the rider of a bicycle or animal.
Note Bicycle is defined in the dictionary.
(3) For this rule, a driver drives over a continuous white edge line on a road if:
(a) for a line on the far left side of the road — the driver’s vehicle is wholly or partly to the left of the line; or
(b) for a line on the far right side of the road — the driver’s vehicle is wholly or partly to the right of the line.

You prompted me to go through some of my Dad's old photo's, The only one I can find with Yellow lines is from my early Teens home town of Chain of Ponds , Not sure of the year for Camperdown photo but going by the cars it looks 1960's , so Brisbane and Vic had white back then.

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I remember yellow lines when I first got my licence(and before) in the mid 80's. I only remember them as lines you could not overtake on. Double, 1 broken 1 not.
They started going white in the 90's (NSW) that I noticed.

While being a Vic I can remember quite clearly that when i crossed the border into NSW double lines were yellow well into the 60's.
I don't know when they changed, but recall something about the states adopting international standards for road markings and signs etc.
Ozjohn.